Greatest N.O. sports teams of all time: No. 1

Staff / Times-Picayune"Shoeless" Joe Jackson may have been the greatest individual athlete to ever pass through New Orleans, and his 1910 Pelicans won it all.

Okay, so winning the "Southern Association" in modern terms equates to roughly a recreation-league softball title, but it is still a championship ... and that is more than most of the teams in the history of this city can say.

The final analysis comes down to not only team success (which the Pelicans definitely achieved for an extended period of time - 10 championships over a 48-year period), but also to star power, and the 1910 version of the Pelicans had perhaps the greatest star in New Orleans sports history: "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.

Ty Cobb once called him "the greatest natural hitter baseball has ever seen," and it's hard to argue with that. As a MLB rookie in 1911 (a year after departing the Pelicans), Jackson set a rookie record by batting .408. Jackson also left the majors third in all-time batting average (.356) and he batted .340 or better for eight of his 13 seasons.

Ultimately, Jackson would gain just as much notoriety for what he didn't accomplish as what he did. After being blackballed from Major League Baseball in 1921, Jackson spent the rest of his career floating around the semi-pro leagues, catching on with various clubs and wowing their fans with his hitting ... before eventually being sent on his way to the next town, and the next team, never to again find a true home for himself in the sport.

It was a tragic ending, but New Orleans was ground zero for the beginning of the story, and his team's prowess netted the city its first championships of any kind. For that alone, "Shoeless" Joe and his Pelicans deserve billing as the best this city has ever seen.

Expert Takes:

Peter Barrouquere:

I know he won the batting title here, Shoeless Joe did. His bio says he "was almost painfully shy and was very superstitious" ... he didn't want his picture taken. Jackson played centerfield for the Pelicans and went on to play for the Indians before joining the Black Sox.

The Black Sox, by the way, were all acquitted by the jury, but the judge wanted to make a statement of them. Jackson never took a dime, and he went on to have a great World Series, but that didn't matter.

Here's a funny story: Many years after Jackson stopped playing, Cobb saw Shoeless in a liquor store with a bottle. He thought his old friend was really down on his luck, so he took to sending him checks from time to time to help him out. Finally, Joe's wife got in touch with him and said, "Look, you can stop sending the checks ... it's Joe's store!" I heard that story over and over again. Who knows if it's true, but it's a great story.

With the Pelicans in 1910, Jackson played 116 games and hit .354 to win the batting title. What's more impressive is that his average (.354) doesn't even qualify him for the Pelicans' top-10 hitters of all time ... what does that tell you about the quality of baseball the Pelicans were playing? Plenty.

Tommy Hendrix, Fred Levine, lots of guys went through that organization onto the majors over the years. Heinie Manush, who himself was a baseball legend, played for the Pels too. He went on to play for the Washington Senators in the big leagues and make the Hall of Fame.

For a lot of years, the Pelicans were the only game in town. No Saints, no Hornets, no VooDoo. It was just the Pelicans. The Pelicans were New Orleans' team.

The big thing back when I was growing up in the 40s and 50s was high school ball. Teams like Jesuit were always stacked and lots of their kids would go on to Notre Dame or Texas and even Tulane, which was a powerhouse itself. You could get 10,000 in Tad Gormley Stadium watching high school football games. Cars were parked everywhere and you had to get there early. Until the 1960s, the NFL just really wasn't that big of a deal ... especially until the Saints came along. So pro sports in this town for a lot of years were secondary. The Pelicans were the biggest exception. They would draw pretty well, and their park, Pelican Stadium, was kind of like a mini-Fenway Field with a really high wall in left field. It was a good atmosphere.

The team tried to play in Gormley for awhile, but that just wasn't a good fit. Baseball is no fun when you're playing in a football stadium. And the team eventually just up and disbanded.

What a lot of people didn't know is that New Orleans nearly got a MLB team back in the 1970s, but missed out on the bid to Toronto ... but only just barely.